Sex and Murder

by Douglas Allen Rhodes

  Their fear grew palpable, and their cries of “Jesus” or “Shit” drifted musically to my ears like pleas for more. I laughed at them and set my power free. The nine who remained alive all leapt to their feet and, according to my will, began to die. Three of them shot themselves. Four more gunned each other down. Another one exploded. His skin and musculature suddenly leapt away from his skeleton and innards, leaving them to stand alone, exposed to the elements. The final cop burst into flames, his death coming to him agonizingly slowly as he stood stock-still and allowed the fire to take him.

  Unopposed, I strode to the door to the inner areas of the station and waved my hand at it. Under the onslaught of my power, its massive steel body warped then split and peeled away. All around me sirens and alarms screamed their warnings. The sounds of reinforcements on their way to deal with me reached my ears, and I laughed, my aura of bullets swirling around me and dancing in time with my chuckles.

  My makeshift doorway opened into a medium-sized room full of monitors, radio equipment, and general office paraphernalia. The room’s two occupants, who had just witnessed my slaughter of their friends, crouched behind an overturned, heavy wooden desk. They waited for me, and each unloaded as I entered the room. One of them had the presence of mind to grab a shotgun; the other held a .44 magnum. Both fired several times, but neither one scored a hit. Their bullets, like all the others, veered off their appointed course and joined my system of deadly satellites.

  I really started to enjoy the day. Unleashing my power in mass amounts felt like a great release, like when you’ve had to hold in a massive piss for so long that you feel like you’re going to burst and then you get to let it go. I loved it.

  Just for fun, I urged my eyes to glow, choosing a bright and blinding red. I waved my hand, and the shotgun cop levitated. I held him helpless, inches above his partner’s head. His partner screamed in horror and scurried backwards, away from his cover and his floating partner, until his back hit the far wall. I waved my hand again, and the shotgun cop tore apart, his arms, legs, and head simultaneously separating themselves from his body. The pieces fell to the floor.

  I turned to face his hysterical partner.

  My eyes seeped energy, short tendrils of power extending from their corners. I shrouded my hands in the same energy, holding them up before me, and laughed at the cop.

  The rear door of the room burst open, and around twenty officers swarmed into the room, most of them armed with M-16s and all of them protected by bullet-proof vests. I shrugged my mind, and my cloak of bullets flew away from me and into the cops, shredding faces, shattering skulls, tearing out throats, and killing them all. All, that is, but for my friend in the corner.

  I had a special plan for him.

  He was beyond rational thought by then, lost in an incoherent, blabbering world of insanity and fear. I walked over to stand before him, waved my hand, and levitated his body to an upright position. He looked at me, and his eyes grew wide with uncomprehending terror. He squealed and shuddered. Smiling at him, I slowly shook my head from side to side. I stopped, let my eyes return to normal, and locked my gaze to his. He gasped, and I shoved my right hand, still cloaked in the pulsing energy, into his forehead and pulled out his brain. I dropped him to the floor.

  The door the mob of cops had come through led to a hallway of other doors. I headed down it, looking from side to side as I advanced. Most of the rooms that bordered the hallway were offices of one sort or another, all empty. At the end of the hallway sat a watch desk, a large metal door behind it. I opened the door just like I had the first one and strode into the jail section of the station.

  The three cops who’d been tending the jail during the mayhem confronted me, and I gunned them down. About seventy-some prisoners occupied the cells, and I allowed them to cheer me for a minute or so before I started killing them. County jail criminals are the most worthless of the lot—they lack the courage of their corruption and so will always remain small time.

  After I had killed the last of them I stood still, breathing deeply and listening to the sirens that blared all around. I knew that I hadn’t killed all the cops in the city of Saltenberg—I’d probably managed only half of the afternoon shift. Still, forty or so cops is a damn good killing, ask anyone. I decided it was time to leave.

  I started up a rather fierce fire in the station and left it to burn to the ground. I blasted a massive hole in the outer wall of the station, walked through it, and stalked to my Hummer.

  Chapter Thirty

  Two nights later, I reached my home in Illinois. I pulled up to my house after a long day of driving and found a Harley Davidson parked conspicuously on my front lawn. The thirty-first day of the contest had hit, and while I’d expected that sometime that day or the next I’d be seeing Erik, I had thought I’d get a chance for a shower first.

  The last two days since I’d pulled off my trilogy of mass murders had gone well. I’d spent most of my time on the road, listening to news reports about what were already being called the worst acts of terrorism to ever occur on U.S. soil. Fifteen hundred had died in New York, seven hundred and forty-three in California. Unsurprisingly, Saltenberg’s police station massacre only got the occasional blurb. In time, though, I knew that would change. Once the realization hit home that its time of occurrence coincided with the other two, someone would make the connection. From there, it would only be a matter of time until Robert Parker was caught—at least that’s how I had it figured.

  The President took time away from fucking fat girls to decry the outrage. He issued several caustic threats and promised the capture of the terrorists responsible. I was sure he’d get his terrorists too. Even if my plan didn’t work out, they’d find some young military boy to take the heat; just ask Oswald or McVeigh.

  My favorites, though, were the radio talk shows. They used my performance to justify everything from across the board gun control, to Internet censorship, to citizen-sponsored vigilantism. The right wingers theorized for hours about the possibility of this being just another CIA plot to turn public support in favor of a war on the militias. Some of them pointed out that any time the Clinton/Gore administration was in PR trouble, a terrorist act or military engagement seemed to spring up out of nowhere to give them an opportunity to react.

  Gore used a campaign stop at an American Legion post as an opportunity to give a speech announcing his new and nebulous plans for anti-terrorism measures within the United States. Careful, he didn’t call for anything too liberal (like gun control) while, at the same time, he avoided using too many conservative blurbs.

  George W. wasn’t so light on his conservativism when he spoke to a gathering of police associations. His plan, however, was no less nebulous. Between the two of them, Bush and Gore managed to say a great amount of nothing, all of which boiled down to the fact that they were pissed about the massacres, but, like everybody else involved, they had no idea whatsoever what could be done about them.

  I knew how it would all end, though; I’d known it from the start. In fact, I’d planned for my own manhunt and eventual capture. All I had to do now was sit back and wait for the feds to uncover the trail I’d left.

  * * * *

  I neared my front door and played over in my head all that was going to happen inside. If I understood Erik the Red half as well as I thought I did, then some sort of surprise awaited me.

  I threw the door wide and erected a shield around myself. What I saw stunned me. Groups of people I’d known in my former life filled my foyer. My friends Mac, Chris, and Joe gathered on a huddle of chairs, evidently in the process of passing around a bong. Across from them, seated behind a large wooden desk and grading papers, sat Mrs. Knoll, my eleventh grade journalism teacher. Sergeant O’Neil, dressed in razor-creased cammies and a Smokey the Bear, was there. So was Dr. Hapscomb, my old pastor. Twenty some of my former acquaintances sat, gathered in my foyer—every one of them dead.

  I let out a low whistle and walked from person to person throug
h that twisted version of This Was Your Life. Some had their throats cut. Others were shot, while some had no signs on them at all of how they’d died. Without exception, though, every one of them had been cleaned, dressed, and arranged to represent the idea of them I’d embedded in my memory.

  I scoured the house and found every single room—including the closets—identically staffed. I revisited old girlfriends, sports rivals, drinking buddies, and members of my family from my great grandmother on down. By the time I had searched the top two floors and made my way to the basement, the sheer gravity of it all sunk in. Not only had this man, this Erik the Red, tracked down virtually everyone I’d ever known and killed them, but he’d also brought them from all over the country to my house, prepared them, and arranged their bodies into nostalgic little scenes—all within a month.

  I had to admit he’d impressed me.

  Erik sat in the torture room amongst the mangled bodies of what immediate family I’d had. My parents, brothers, and sisters filled the machines, each looking to have died during brutal torture. Evidently, Erik’d had time left over for fun.

  He sat in a large electric chair in the center of the room. To his left stood a table, a single bottle of Jagermeister and two shot glasses adorning it. He dressed much the same as I’d seen him before, only this time coatless and with a wicked-looking battle axe leaned against his chair.

  “Erik,” I greeted him.

  He motioned to a chair near him, and I moved to sit on it. The way he behaved irked me, like my house was his manor, his kingdom. I kept my tongue in check.

  “I see you’ve been busy,” I said.

  “So you’ve returned, little god,” he mocked me. “I’ve heard the reports of the slayings in New York and California. Yours, I suppose?”

  “Who else?” I tried sounding cocky. He hadn’t made the link to the police massacre yet, so I still had one element to surprise him with.

  “I suppose that shit down in Kansas was you too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good work. You’re definitely the artist Loki says you are. One thing you never seem to learn, though, is to cover your trail. It’ll take every resource the Community has to keep you from being caught.” He paused and smiled. “Guess you don’t much give a shit, though, do you?”

  I laughed. “Not really. You?”

  “Fuck, no. Let the lesser beings clean it up. I’ll tell you this, though, you gave a damn good showing.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I liked it.”

  “Still lost, though.”

  “You think?”

  His smile grew sharper, more feral. “Yours was good, I’ll give you that, but let’s be honest…mine’s just plain better. It’s more personal, better executed; fuck, it’s even got more style.”

  “I admit it.”

  He eyed me for a moment, perhaps unsure of something he’d figured pretty cut and dried. He seemed to shake off the notion and reached for the bottle of Jagermeister, pouring two shots.

  “I knew I’d best you,” he sneered. “You’ve got the right mentality for this shit, but you’re just not on my level.”

  I nodded towards the bottle. “That mine?”

  “Yeah, I got it from your bar so that we could toast my victory.” He smiled threateningly. “That bother you?”

  “No, I just wondered.”

  He offered me a shot of the green syrupy liquor, but I shook my head and held up my palm. His eyes blazed to life, taking on a deadly gleam.

  “You turning down my toast?” His words came out harsh, dripping death.

  “No, not your toast.” I waved my hand in the air and duplicated his trick from the restaurant, summoning up a bottle of Jack Daniels and a shot glass. “Just your choice of liquor.”

  He released a sharp laugh, and I poured my shot.

  “You got balls at least. Fuck it, then. Have your whiskey.”

  He started to drink, but I interrupted his action.

  “Before we drink, I gotta know: What the hell is that tattoo on your forehead?”

  He relaxed visibly and touched his brow with his free hand’s fingers.

  “It’s the brand of the Berserker, the warrior in service to Odin.”

  I nodded, thinking back to all that Norse Mythology I’d read.

  “So you’re a Berserker, then, with the battle rages and the turning into a bear and all that shit?”

  “Yeah,” he sneered. “All that shit.”

  “Far out.”

  “Yeah, fuckin’ far out. Let’s get this damn toast over so I can get out of here.” He said it like the whole toast had been my idea in the first place.

  I lifted my glass to him, and we both downed our shots. The Jack felt good and harsh on my tired throat. Erik looked like he enjoyed his too—until the poison hit him.

  I’d used a fast acting, deadly, and very powerful poison, putting enough of it into the Jagermeister to kill a couple of elephants. One shot was more than sufficient for a man.

  Erik managed a split second of realization, then the poison took him. Our gazes locked in that instant, and total understanding passed between us. I started to smile and, by the time I finished, Erik was dead.

  I took another drink of Jack straight from the bottle and started the final part of my plan. I pulled the small package I’d procured near Saltenberg from my pocket and unwrapped it. It contained two licenses. The first one belonged to Robert Parker and had all the same information as the one I already owned. The only difference between the two was that this one had Erik’s picture on it. The other license had my picture on it, but it was issued to a Mr. Gabriel Allen—my new identity.

  I rummaged through Erik’s pockets and found his wallet. It contained a thousand dollars, but no ID. I left the one I’d had made for him in the wallet and put it back in his pocket.

  In the end, I’d been the one to pull off the better murder after all. Not the trilogy murder—that had honestly just been to pass the time. No, I’d done something much bigger. I’d killed us both. You can’t beat that for style.

  A few days from that night, the feds would follow the trail I’d left them to my house. There they would find another canister of CX, five pounds of C-4, and the .45s that had been used in the Saltenberg killings.

  See, I had learned to cover my trail after all.

  I scooped up the bottle of Jack and headed upstairs. Along the way, I pulled a joint from my coat’s inner pocket and fired it up. I took a long, hard drag on my weed and chased it with a swig of Jack. I strolled through my house, saying goodbye to its many attractions and comforts.

  Finally, the joint half gone and the Jack not too far behind, I walked out the front door and started the long trek into town, leaving the life of Robert Parker behind me.